SASF – Blogs

Ramtanu Maitra

29 Sep 2008

In recent weeks, particularly following the removal of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former President and Chief of Army Staff, on 18 August, Washington has begun to train its guns on Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), which is on the border with Afghanistan.

On 3 September, US troops raided a known habitat of Taliban leaders in South Waziristan, without seeking permission from Islamabad. The USA’s unilateral violation of Pakistani territory created a furore in Islamabad, but it is evident that Washington has come to the dangerous conclusion that the Durand Line – the international border that separates Pakistan from Afghanistan, and was drawn on sand more than century ago by a British clerk – does not hold any longer. In order to secure Afghanistan, and tame the insurgents there, Washington has decided that US troops have no choice but to take the bull by the horns and move into the FATA physically, to eliminate the Taliban leaders.

Beside the furore that the raid has caused, it is evident that the Americans do not really understand what they are taking on. It is not that the US troops are not militarily competent to deal with the enemy, no matter what the strength of that enemy could be; the real issue here is that Washington refuses to acknowledge who its actual enemies are.

On the ground, the FATA is controlled by the tribal groups, who have remained non-integrated as a result of the British policy of divide and rule, and by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), a section of which works hand-in-glove with MI6.

In other words, the enemy is the British controllers, not the local tribesmen. In a recent article, the senior Indian journalist Bhaskar Menon pointed out that relations between the ISI and the British intelligence community have been close for decades, and have extended into a variety of areas.

Britain’s post-World War II role as the patron of the Muslim Brotherhood (inherited from Nazi Germany), developed into a low-profile alliance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, to guide the most effective anti-communist movement in the Islamic world.

“The Brotherhood has provided the leadership of every major ‘Islamic’ terrorist organization, including the Taliban and al- Qaeda,” Menon noted (17 September 2008, www.vijayvaani.com).

Following the US incursion into the FATA, Pakistan’s newly appointed President Asif Ali Zardari travelled to London to seek the British Prime Minister’s support against the US-led border violation. While it is true that the FATA is basically controlled from London, with the help of the MI6 and the ISI, it is nonetheless strange, but at the same time revealing, that Zardari, who “got” his job by ousting Musharraf with the help of the United States, ran to London, and not to Washington, to seek help.  continue reading…

By Ramtanu Maitra 30 March, 2005

The United States is beefing up its military presence in Afghanistan, at the same time encircling Iran. Washington will set up nine new bases in Afghanistan in the provinces of Helmand, Herat, Nimrouz, Balkh, Khost and Paktia.

Reports also make it clear that the decision to set up new US military bases was made during Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to Kabul last December. Subsequently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai accepted the Pentagon diktat. Not that Karzai had a choice: US intelligence is of the view that he will not be able to hold on to his throne beyond June unless the US Army can speed up training of a large number of Afghan army recruits and protect Kabul. Even today, the inner core of Karzai’s security is run by the US State Department with personnel provided by private US contractors.

Admittedly, Afghanistan is far from stable, even after four years of US presence. Still, the establishment of a rash of bases would seem to be overkill. Indeed, according to observers, the base expansion could be part of a US global military plan calling for small but flexible bases that make it easy to ferry supplies and can be used in due time as a springboard to assert a presence far beyond Afghanistan.

Afghanistan under control?

On February 23, according to the official Bakhter News Agency, 196 American military instructors arrived in Kabul. These instructors are scheduled to be in Afghanistan until the end of 2006. According to General H Head, commander of the US Phoenix Joint Working Force, the objective of the team is to expedite the educational and training programs of Afghan army personnel. The plan to protect Karzai and the new-found “democracy” in Afghanistan rests on the creation of a well-trained 70,000-man Afghan National Army (ANA) by the end of 2006. As of now, 20,000 ANA personnel help out 17,000-plus US troops and some 5,000-plus North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops currently based in Afghanistan.

In addition, on February 28, in a move to bring a large number of militiamen into the ANA quickly, Karzai appointed General Abdur Rashid Dostum, a regional Uzbek-Afghan warlord of disrepute, as his personal military chief of staff. The list of what is wrong with Dostum is too long for this article, but he is important to Karzai and the Pentagon.

Dostum has at least 30,000 militiamen, members of his Jumbush-e-Milli, under him. A quick change of their uniforms would increase the ANA by 30,000 at a minimal cost. Moreover, Dostum’s men do not need military training (what they do need is some understanding of and respect for law and order). Another important factor that comes into play with this union is the Pentagon-Karzai plan to counter the other major north Afghan ethnic grouping, the Tajik-Afghans. continue reading…